It is said that the day of wedding is the most beautiful day in a Woman’s Life. No wonder many young brides want this day to be Perfect. From dress and comfortable shoes to wedding favours. Recently trending, chocolates make ideal wedding favours. Some time ago I was asked if I would be able to prepare wedding favour chocolates. This question gave me thrills. I cannot say it was a mostly pleasant feeling. I was slightly petrified! But after careful considerations, I decided to give this idea a go! Recently I had an opportunity to run a test. Namely – I have been invited to a wedding! And so I bravely offered my chocolate services as a present to the Newlyweds. My offer met with reasonable enthusiasm, and so at the end of September I found myself in a production mania. Objective: 100 Wedding Chocolates Assumption : I had to divide my work to batches to make it digestable for one person. After all it’s been a single largest batch of chocolates producted by me in one go so far! Stage 1 This stage was fairly easy. I just had to temper some chocolate. In this case, I used chocolate 55%. To the chocolate mass I added some orange peel and for breaking the taste…. rosemary! After tempering I had to pour the chocolate in the moulds and wait a few hours for it to set (in reality I could resume my work on the following day). Stage 2 The second stage was a reasonably pleasant part- decorating. The 100 chocolate hearts were treated with golden (edible!) spray...

This year’s summer is slowly going away. Along with the summer, there go all those wild parties in the open, until dawn (in winter you can also party in the open but it takes some certain level of desperation IMHO). Back in the days of my long lost youth I still remember those summer nights. There was no sitting at home. Every weekend was filled with joy, dancing and coctails. However chocolate coctails did not appear in my menu until recently. Back then I preferred more more refreshing drinks (shame on me!) And what is the single best refresher in the heat of the night? Cocktail! A good coctail! Since we’ve reached almost the end of summer, the nights are no longer so sultry. Hence, there is no need for such refreshment. That’s why cocktails can take on density and clarity. and chocolate!! Some time ago I gave a recipe for home made chocolate liqueur. If you managed to do it at home, then great! It will serve as a basis for today’s experiments. Here are some recipes if you want to take a closer look : RECIPE 1 RECIPE 2 RECIPE 3 Today I want to introduce three unforgettable recipes (that is if you manage to stick to the the limits of consumption). Recipe 1-Chocolate Martini-Chocolatini Chocolatini is the invention of recent years-the whole internet is overwhelmed with many variations of this cocktail. Often there is a version of Bailyes’em (as even here). However, I bet on a version based on the good, old vodka. Ingredients : One unit of chocolate liqueur -40 ml One unit of vodka 40 ml Sweet Cream (Note! I ...

“But how’s that?! Cheese and chocolate?! ” I heard from a friend when I showed her occasional photo on my Instagram (follow) The surprise is probably due to the fact that Chocolate is associated with sweetness. We like to think about cheeses rather in terms of “salty”. In the end we all heard about wine + cheese combo. For more adventurous readers I also recommend my guide- soon to come – how to pair chocolate with wine (stay tuned folks!) So what about cheese? The first time I heard about cheese and chocolate pairing while I was on holiday in Colombia. It turns out that cheese dipped in hot chocolate is a traditional delicacy served in many cafés in Bogota. Hearing about this delicacy (?) for the first time I winced in a slight expectation of the worst. It turned out, however, that the cheese served in hot chocolate is a soft cheese, in the taste resembling a bit ricotta (maybe a little more blunt than ricotta and -yes! that’s possible). As a result, the shock for the taste buds was a bit smaller. But really speaking of serving yourself a surprise, it turns out all the fun is to hack the sense of taste and strike with salty and sweet. Simultaneously. Sounds silly? And Salted caramel, anyone? Camembert and cranberries? These are the classics of this type of matching Okay. Enough of it. Let’s get down to business and pair something. and by that, I mean – of course – Cheese and chocolate pairing 101. In this post I am not going to go into into the depths of the art of pairing. This time just the basics – what...

Rosemary pralines. This experimento is so unusual, that I do not even know how to write proper intro to this kitchen adventure. A few days ago I asked my Instagram audience in a poll, if it was a good idea to go and try this in my own kitchen. 100% voted “let’s do this! You go girl!. So I went! Believe you me, purchasing fresh rosemary at the beggining of December it ain’t all that easy. So after visiting several supermarkets, I can call my mission a success, and so Ladies and Gentlemen- fresh rosemary pralines Let me repeat myself – it was a big culinary experiment. I searched through the web and found no reasonable recipe to replicate. And so I had to make my own! The closest to an inspiration I got was this recipe here, but in the end the only common ingredient proved to be rosemary itself! At first I was a bit sceptical, after all I was experimenting with a really unusual ingredient. But my instincts proved me right! I have just finished preparing rosemary pralines and they blew me away! Sweet and sauer orange perfectly compliements bitterish rosemary. It’s a match made in heaven. But what am I going to explain to you, go and try yourselves! So let me share with you my recent discovery. Ingredients for 10 pralines : 50 grams of milk chocolate 50 grams of dark chocolate 50 grams of mascarpone zest of half orange chocolate sprinkle or cocoa powder for decoration Preparation : Melt both kinds of chocolate in water bath Stir in mascarpone Add rosemary and...

I am not a very big fan of complicated dishes. Nor vodka to be precise. And when it comes to preparing complicatged dishes with vodka…man I’m out! That’s why I started studying liqueurs. Well actually recipes for liqueurs. Homemade liqueurs are fun and easy and spirit based, rather than vodka! Classic win-win situation. So to start off smoothly I bring you chocolate liqueur – the easy recipe. To be honest, it was quite a mental challenge for me to go to the liquor store and purchase 96% spirit (more on my mental issues regarding the subject can be found here). But once I bought that half a litre bottle, suddenly my head got full of culinary ideas. I started releasing my creativity in a very old school manner – I went through all of my cookbooks to find the perfect recipe for chocolate liqueur. And guess what? I found nothing suitable. I tried preparing this liqueur several times before calling it a success. Why was that? Well, I followed the recipe which contained condensed milk and found the liqueur impossible to remove from the bottle! I had to break the thing with a hammer! Totally worth it act of violence! So, hbut aving learnt from that failure I enhanced the vintage recipe a bit. I confirm that after a week, it’s still in a drinkable state rather than edible. Ingrdients : 100 g milk chocolate 200 ml spirit Tin of condensed milk (aha!! still there!!) 300 ml or a cup of full milk Pinch of cinnamon (optional but since it’s my singature spice I add it everywhere. If you...

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